After 3 years of slowly accumulating 40,000 US FF miles, I decided to spring for a first class ticket to my buddy's bachelor party in Las Vegas.

Jan 16th, 2004
US 1105 LGA-PIT
A321 seat 2A

LGA was experiencing 2 hour arrival delays due to the high winds this night and I knew that would translate into departure delays as well. I had a 1-hour connection in PIT, to the last flight to Vegas for the night, so I knew it would be tight. Our scheduled departure time of 6.06pm came and went and I was still sitting there. They made an announcement that all passengers with a connecting flight departure time of 8:25pm or earlier had to be rebooked. My connection was set to leave at 8:45pm so they were certainly cutting it close. There were a bunch of girls going to a bachelorette party is Vegas as well and I told them I think we'd be ok but I wasn’t too sure as it kept getting later and later.

Finally the inbound A321 parks at the gate and off walks almost the entire cast of the Soprano’s except for Tony and Carmella, which was very cool!

By the time the very full flight was boarded, pushed back and lined up for takeoff, I was getting quite worried, would we make it?

It was quite the party atmosphere on board this flight as I boarded (as I'm sure most Vegas bound flights are). The guy sitting next to me was already a little drunk and it only got worse from there. I eventually had to start drinking with him just so he'd stop bugging me about not drinking. The 757 was a little worn inside and the TV monitor at row 0 was flickering wildly the whole time which my drunk seat mate thought was very psychedelic.

Meal service was a little pathetic; we had a choice of the same items from the LGA segment or a cold turkey sandwich, which was pretty bad. But it was getting late and the two rum and cokes put me to sleep and I woke up as we began our decent into Vegas.

LAS was very busy and we had to wait for a gate to open up, even at 10:30pm.

*** I will leave the Vegas bachelor party activities to your imagination ***

Let’s just say I was really glad to be flying first class today. After a 3-day weekend, a Monday in LAS is CRAZY! If not for the first class security line, it would have EASILY been 2 hours in the “regular” line.

This 757 was just as worn as the last one if not more. It looks like US uses all 757s now at LAS from PHL, PIT and CLT. However, the meal service was much better. We had a choice of roast beef sandwich or Asian chicken salad. I had the salad which came with a very good cup of roasted tomato soup, crackers, and a nice chocolate chip cookie; all of which was served on china.

The actual flying time turned out to be much closer to 4 hours because of a roundabout approach into CLT.

Jan 19th, 2004
US 40 CLT-LGA
A321 seat 2A
Flying time was ? at ? ft

My connection was already boarding when I got to the gate. FC was pretty empty this time, as apposed to completely full on the previous 3 flights. I don’t mean to start a A vs. B war here but after flying on two 757s and two A321s, it really seems like the over head bins are much smaller on the Airbus, causing increased boarding time and problems on the two Airbus flights.

F service consisted of your choice of dry snacks again.

I was the first one off the plane because I knew that my car would be encased in ice and I’ve some fun chopping to do before I could get home.

Overall, domestic F service on US wasn’t anything to write home about but it was still a welcomed change from riding all those B1900ds all summer that earned me these miles. However, just for the mess at LAS on Monday alone, it was well worth it.

WOW, looking at the lenghth of you LGA-PIT and CLT-LGA flights, some baggaged snackes in FIRST is unacceptable. When I fly LX on the short 1h flight to DUS from ZRH every week, in C you get a full meal, and this on a usually packed A319! Really a world of difference from European standards, I would think twice about forking out the extra cash or miles, and save them to upgrade on a TATL flight on a European airline.....but like I said that's just my opinion

Anyways good TR, but maybe next time you could add pictures, as they give make the reader feel like they're actually looking out of that window, or actually eating those stale pretzles

Quoting Pshifrin (Thread starter):Meal service was a little pathetic; we had a choice of the same items from the LGA segment or a cold turkey sandwich, which was pretty bad.

Quoting Pshifrin (Thread starter):We had a choice of roast beef sandwich or Asian chicken salad. I had the salad which came with a very good cup of roasted tomato soup, crackers, and a nice chocolate chip cookie; all of which was served on china.

Note that this trip report was started over THREE YEARS AGO... however the level of service in US Airways First Class hasn't changed much and has declined over the years. I fly US Airways a lot (I've reached their highest frequent flyer status) and the other day I received an E-mail survey about my experience in US Airways First Class. While I hope the survey was designed to help them improve service, the pessimist in me made me wonder if it was to find out what was important and get rid of the rest . I know they've gone through bankruptcy--twice... but to me it is not an excuse. By the way, here's my view from first class on a flight a few weeks ago...